For International Workers Solidarity Action to Defend the
Palestinians

Oakland
Picket Blocks Israeli Ship!

Mass
picket of hundreds on the Oakland docks blocked the unloading of
Israeli ZIM line ship June 20.

JUNE 21
– Yesterday mass pickets at the
Port of Oakland (California) blocked the
unloading
of an Israeli ship, the ZIM Shenzhen.
They were protesting the May 31 Israeli massacre of activists aboard a
flotilla
carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza. More than 800 demonstrators showed
up before
dawn at Pier 58 for the day shift picket lasting from 5:30 until 9:30
a.m. Demonstrators
chanted, “Free, free Palestine – Don’t cross the picket line,” and “An
injury
to one is an injury to all – the Israeli apartheid wall will fall.”
Longshoremen
refused to cross the line, and after management demanded an immediate
arbitration ruling, the arbitrator sided with the workers. Hundreds of
protesters returned for the evening shift, but by then the company had
given up
on calling in a shift. So the picketers succeeded in blocking the
unloading of
the Zim Lines freighter for 24 hours. This is
the first time an Israeli ship was
blocked in a U.S. port, and gives a big boost to efforts for
international
workers actions against the murderous Zionist regime.

The
Oakland action was organized by an ad hoc Labor/Community Committee in
Solidarity
with the People of Palestine including the Transport Workers Solidarity
Committee, several Palestinian solidarity groups, the Bay Area ANSWER
Coalition
and area labor activists. It was formed after the executive board of
the San
Francisco-Oakland Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse
Union
(ILWU) two weeks ago passed a motion condemning Israel’s deadly raid
and
“call[ing] for unions to protest by any action they choose to take.”
The Local
10 motion cited the ILWU’s commendation of the South African dock
workers union
for its February 2009 action refusing to unload an Israeli ship in the
port of
Durban, the decision of the Swedish Port Workers Union to refuse to
handle
Israeli ships and cargo (scheduled to start June 23), and the appeal by
the
Palestinian Trade Union Movement calling on dock workers worldwide to
take
action against the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

The “labor/community picket” of the Israeli
container ship at the Port of Oakland docks was endorsed by the Oakland
Education Association, and built by appeals from the San Francisco
Labor Council and Alameda County Labor Council who condemned the
Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla and sent out notices urging
Bay Area unionists to join the lines. Solidarity statements hailing the
Oakland action were received from the Cuban Labor Federation (CTC),
Labor for Palestine, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions
and fired Liverpool dockers, among others. The PGFTU message to the
Oakland picket said that this action was “something we have longed for
and expected,” recalling the “historic and massive action on the docks
in 1984, when you acted to boycott the apartheid regime in South
Africa.” The action of ILWU Local 10 longshoremen to boycott the
Nedlloyd Kimberley was later cited by Nelson Mandela as a key event
propelling solidarity with the South African struggle internationally.

Protester
leading chants during June 20 picket of Israeli ZIM line ship in
Oakland. (Photo: John Sebastian Russo/San
Francisco Chronicle)

The
June 20 picket was reported on local television (KTVU) and in articles
in
today’s San Francisco Chronicle and
the Oakland Tribune, as well as wire
service reports. Significantly, news of the picket was picked up by the
web
site of the right-wing Zionist Jerusalem
Post and the popular Israeli Internet news site Ynet News, which
also
carried a video of the action. It is useful to bring to the attention
of the
Israeli public that the murderous actions of the Zionist regime have a
price.
Certainly the Israeli authorities were well aware of it, as the Israeli
consul
in San Francisco called up the SF Labor Council to complain about its
support
for the picket.

We
have called on unions internationally to carry out labor boycotts
of
Israeli ships, planes and cargo in protest against the latest massacre
by the
Zionist butchers. While the action on the Oakland docks was called by
labor/community activists, it had wide union support and participation.
The Oakland Tribune article noted, “The
longshoremen’s union largely cooperated with the picket line. No
workers tried
to cross it.” San Francisco-Oakland Local 10 of the ILWU has a long
history of
solidarity action, including boycotting cargo to and from the Pinochet
dictatorship in Chile and the death-squad regime in El Salvador. It
also hosted
an October 2007 Labor Conference to Stop the War and introduced the
motion that
led to the historic May Day 2008 Pacific Coast-wide ILWU port shutdown
against
the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many
of those who marched on the picket yesterday called for a boycott of
Israeli
goods by consumers, as well as divestment and sanctions. We have noted
elsewhere (see our article “Israel’s
Gaza
Flotilla
Massacre:
Bloody
War Provocation”) that the “BDS” campaign
is
oriented toward pressuring imperialist governments to take action
against
Israel. A real struggle against Zionist occupation and oppression of
the
Palestinians must be directed against the Israeli government,
and its imperialist backers who are enemies, not
neutrals or potential
allies, of the Palestinian people. As ILWU Local 10 executive board
member and
labor solidarity activist Jack Heyman noted at a June 5 protest against
the
Israeli attack:

(Photo: Labor Video
Project)

“Simply
petitioning or pressuring the Obama administration for justice is
illusory,
it’s not going to work. Every U.S. government since the creation of the
state
of Israel has given that government a blank check.... And it’s not
going to
happen by consumer boycotts either.”

“The
Swedish dock workers, who stood strong against the apartheid regime,
have just
announced yesterday, that they will strike against every Israeli ship
in Sweden.
That is the kind of action that is needed to oppose the oppression by
the
Zionists against the Palestinian people. Workers have the power. We
need to
exercise that kind of power today, just as we did in 1984 against the
ship from
South Africa.”

The
Zionist attack on the Gaza aid flotilla and cold-blooded murder of nine
activists on the Mavi Marmara
provoked disgust around the world. A host of unions and labor
federations have
issued statements denouncing the Israeli action to one degree or other,
including
the International Confederation of Trade Unions (the former ICFTU,
which was
organized to support the imperialists’ anti-communist Cold War against
the
Soviet Union), which called for an “investigation,” and the World
Federation of
Trade Unions, which called on unions to carry out a three-day strike in
the
world’s ports against shipping to and from Israel. But whatever
illusions in
the reformability of capitalism and “their” governments the labor
bureaucrats
promote, the boycott of the Israeli ship at the Oakland docks
underscored the
power of international labor solidarity and pointed to the urgent need
for workers
action against the Zionist Murder Inc.